- Greece Holidays
- Barbati
- Golden Mare Resort
Touched by the Ionian Sea, recently built Golden Mare Resort in Barbati Corfu, Greece, is a beach resort for memorable island holidays. This modern & elegant beach resort invites you to discover 119 rooms and suites offering splendid interiors, stunning views of the Bay of Barbati and quality service. The hotels is combined by 45 double rooms, 40 bungalows and invididual blocks seperately with executive rooms. For the ultimate retreat, guests may visit the Hote's Spa facilities with Jakuzzi , sauna, massage & beauty treatments. The Golden Mare Resort inspirationally conceived to capture the essence of surrounding natural wonders and host the most welcome and appreciated guests with world class elegance and style. Golden Mare Resort is a world-class Resort where facilities, services and guest's experiences merge to create lifelong memories.
Take advantage of recreation opportunities such as a seasonal outdoor pool or take in the view from a terrace and a garden. Getting to the surf and sand is a breeze with the complimentary beach shuttle.
Due to the surrounding area and the number of steps around the hotel, it may not be suitable for those with mobility difficulties.
I was dubious about this holiday after reading the negative reviews online. Sadly, it was worse than expected as we seemed to experience all the negative reviews combined.
Initially we were given an 'upgrade' which were a set of rooms a drive from the hotel. (On the way to these rooms the driver crashed with us in the vehicle & personal belongings damaged) We also experienced a staff member shouting at us while we tried to resolve how the rooms were not as advertised, smell of smoke, dirty, being far from the main hotel. Other issues faced include:
BEDROOMS • Ants in rooms • Broken and severely stained sofa bed in one room. Other broken and shabby furniture. No shower holder for the shower head in one room. • Toilet in one room not always functioning - had to flush it by using the shower head regularly. • Electricity power outages multiple times across multiple rooms. • Beds so uncomfortable multiple people in our party stuggled to sleep and had a lot of pain. • The rooms and bathrooms were not cleaned each day - it appeared that only the towels were changed daily.
GENERAL • Lighting in one hallway for the rooms was clearly broken so a lamp sat on the floor. • Generally uncleanliness and low quality standards theoughout (I will upload photos of the main toilet) • Don't expect to use the gym as it is horrendous (plenty of random liquids throughout with rust, dirty gym mats, broken furniture and equipment) • The hotel does not appear as actual advertising photos - we were sold a gorgeous hotel and in reality it is nothing like this. Even in the photos it looks like an infinity pool. In reality there is safety glass, power lines and trees and none of the double beds advertised. • There was a movie room advertised, but it is also the luggage room with a TV and a larger amount of dirty furniture. • The hotel is on a very steep hill which was a struggle to walk.
FOOD/DRINK • The soft drinks are disgusting - especially in the resturant. I was unable to drink any during our stay with the meals. • The food is unsuitable for vegetarians as a lot of the food sold as veggie dishes had bacon in it. If it wasnt for the chips that were lovely, I would have struggled. The taste of what I was able to eat is questionable a lot of the time, and variety is not great. • There was a leak coming from directly above the door to outside the resturant (which dripped into my dinner when bringing it to the seating area - gross) • There was an issue with wasps at the seating areas.
The one good thing was the roof top area as the view there is stunning - the only reason there is 2 stars for location.
There isnt much to do close by - we did a beach club, took a bus to the old town and a boat trip day - if for some reason you do end up here, I would recommend doing this to make the holiday bareable.
Do not recommend.
This hotel could be really nice if it was cleaner & better maintained There is only one public toilet in the hotel with 2 cubicles for men & 2 for ladies which clearly isn’t enough for the amount of residents At times the men’s were flooded & the ladies were full of discarded loo roll - disgusting & they were never checked through the day as far as the check sheet on the door was concerned The shower in our room wasn’t fit for purpose as the wall attachment for the shower hose was too high & at the wrong angle The food offering was poor - not a great variety , repetitive & pretty much Luke warm or stone cold although the outside terrace was splendid At times the bar staff (only ever 1 person)in the only bar were away replenishing stock or whatever which meant a wait , whilst there were plentiful reception staff who should’ve been redeployed to help out rather than chatting or having a smoke outside ? We raised our concerns on several occasions ref the toilet hygiene but were pretty much fobbed off without the issues being sorted in a timely manner In my humble opinion this is not a 4 star experience, 3 would be quite generous tbh 😬
First of all, i would like to say that the staff are lovely and willing to help with any issues. However that being said, we have stayed in this hotel for 2 weeks and have had a multitude of issues: ROOM we paid for an upgraded room with a sea view - it did have a beautiful view but we were not informed until arrival that our room was away from the main hotel, up a very steep hill with a mini bus ride to our block. Our block had no facilities and was poorly maintained - one of the wooden steps was broken for multiple days and eventually fell off completely. the other steps up to our room were not secure. On top of this our doorhandle fell off repeatedly for an entire week and we mentioned this every single day. We eventually got the option to move rooms but clarified this with reception and they said it was not due to the doorhandle, but because we were far away which leads me to believe they would not be fixing it. We also had no hot water in our upgraded room for multiple days. There was also a smell of sewage in our room throughout the week we spent in that room prior to being moved. Our room was also not cleaned for 3 days despite multiple requests and even so, the bins weren’t emptied, surfaces weren’t cleaned and nothing was dusted. The sign outside the door that is meant to be the room number and an electronic do not disturb/clean please was completely rubbed off. attached a picture of ours vs what it was meant to look like. We could also hear our neighbours clearly through the drains. We also had no wifi in our main room. There was no drinking water available and we also had no tea and coffee in our room until we asked reception for this. The new room in the main building we were moved to was much better than this but the shower was still broken and full of dirt and grime. On leaving, we lifted the beds up to do a final sweep to make sure we didn’t forget anything and the floor under the beds was thick with dirt, grime and leftover items from previous guests. Our room still was not cleaned thoroughly ie surfaces were not cleaned, it was just towels and bedding daily.
FOOD The food was awful, on the photos the buffet looks much bigger than it actually is. There is probably 8-10 hot dishes every day which are often reused for multiple meals as we noticed across our two week stay. My partner ate greek yoghurt on the first day and we thought she’d mistaken it for cottage cheese as it was not right, but it was curdled yoghurt. The majority of fruit is poorly cut or tinned, grapes looked brown. The food sits under heat lamps for hours and is cold, the red meat is tough and hard so we gave it to the local orange cat who is lovely. We both had stomach issues throughout our stay and decided to eat at local restaurants instead despite paying for all inclusive (Skala bar and Bahia Mare beach club are lovely).
DRINKS On arrival the drinks were honestly like drinking seawater, many guests complained about this. Around 1 week into our stay i am assuming the filter was changed as they weren’t as salty but still low quality so i chose to buy cans of coke and fanta from the hotel shop instead. The cups were visibly dirty and small and plastic on multiple occasions. i ordered a frappé and i will just attach a picture of what this was but it wasn’t drinkable.
FACILITIES There is ONE public toilet in the whole building. In two weeks i never found them to be clean. On more than one occasion we had to ask for the bins in the public toilet to be emptied and ask for toilet roll. In two weeks we also never seen a cleaner cleaning any of the hotel, which i was shocked at as usually in hotels there are constantly people cleaning. The railing down to the games room / bar was broken and just hanging in the middle of the stairs for at least two days. This was removed but not replaced. The games room is really poor quality, no games have all their pieces the table tennis paddles are all ripped and broken. Every table is wobbly and has stains or marks on.
POOL AREA the pool is lovely it’s large and there are many loungers, we never dealt with “sunbed wars” and they are comfortable but you can tell the cushions on the loungers are getting old as they all had stains on and some were replacement cushions that were much thinner. The infinity pool on the picture isn’t quite as “infinity” as it looks as it appears there’s a second pool that is empty in front of the pool and you can’t see the skyline due to the trees in front of the hotel. There is a very small basic children’s pool but i wouldn’t recommend bringing children here.
ENTERTAINMENT There is live entertainment most evenings, nothing during the day. there is also a movie every afternoon in the TV room which we did not attend but we did store our luggage in this room before leaving. We never saw anyone in the TV room. There is also a rooftop bar that was an extra cost but we decided against going here as the drinks at the main bar weren’t great and didn’t want to pay for a drink if it would be of the same quality.
There isn’t much around if you’re looking for somewhere with a strip of restaurants and bars but the local bars and restaurants that are around are lovely.
Bad points- cleanliness of rooms & public areas are not good. The public toilets were very dirty all the time. In the rooms the bed was made but that was it. We had to ask for towels to be replaced. The cups, spoons tea, milks etc were not replaced. Our kettle didnt switch off, some lights not working, which we reported on day 1 but they didnt get fixed. Food was exactly the same every day for Lunch & Dinner, so we had the same meal for the whole week. The desserts are the same very dry chocolate cake with different coloured icing. We ate out a couple of times because of this. Food was also only luke warm. All drinks hot & cold tasted salty. The staff were all sullen, & especially on the bar except 1 young girl ( who was the only staff member to smile) they slammed your drinks down & the man rolled his eyes & mumbled under his breath every time we asked for a drink. Good points - the views are stunning! Barbati is a quiet resort with a handful of shops & restaurants. Everyone else we met outside of the hotel were very friendly & helpful. Its a shame that this hotel seems to be run badly because in the right hands it could be amazing.
I had requested if possible not to have a main building room as reviews had stated it was very noisy, this was ignored and told by the manager that there would be no noise, which turned out to be not the case and was extremely noisy at night due to the entertainment, the Hotel was not very busy however this was fobbed off regarding future arrivals.
When we arrived at our room, the smell in the corridor was absolutely disgusting! It smelt of raw sewage and the bathroom inside our room also had the same smell, it did come and go but was very unpleasant. This was brought to the manager's attention again and we were told it would be checked out however nothing was said to us in response.
Our shower cubicle was filthy with the pipes all brown marks and rusted, the toilet bowl also heavily stained, looking like it had never seen any cleaning in its lifetime.
Food was almost the same every mealtime, food was not hot, if you chose to go to dining room later, for example 45 minutes before ending, there was not much left.
Bar ran out of Brandy and Irish cream four days before we departed, so we ended up buying our own.
Ladies toilet in the Lobby was overflowing with used toilet paper from a bin that never seemed to be emptied (Disgusting!!)
Terrace bar which was not part of the All inclusive also had a terrible raw sewage smell, obvious problem with the main building sewage system, we ended up taking our cocktails to our room balcony.
Overall a VERY disappointing experience!!!
